» Yorkshire Ripper to die in jail after losing appeal against life sentence

Yorkshire Ripper to die in jail after losing appeal against life sentence

Published: Saturday, January 15, 2011, 12:10 [IST]

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London, Jan 15 (ANI): British serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed 'The Yorkshire Ripper', will be spending the rest of his life in Broadmoor Hospital after he lost an appeal against his whole life sentence.

Sutcliffe, 64, who at his Old Bailey trial in 1981 claimed he heard God's voice telling him to murder prostitutes, must stay under guard because of his crimes, which included 13 killings and seven attempted murders.

The serial killer hired a team of leading barristers costing taxpayers around 400,000 pounds to appeal against his whole life tariff, arguing that his mental disorder justified a minimum jail term.

But in the Court of Appeal the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, Justice Calvert-Smith and Justice Griffith Williams rejected the appeal, saying that his crimes were of the "utmost brutality".

"An examination of the entire catalogue of the offences demonstrates that this was criminal conduct at the extreme end of horror," the Daily Mail quoted Lord Judge as saying.

"Each of the attempted murders, as well as each of the murder offences, was a dreadful crime of utmost brutality.

"Taking all the offences together, we have been considering an accumulation of criminality of exceptional magnitude which went far beyond the legislative criteria for a whole-life order.

"That is the only available punishment proportionate to these crimes," he stated.

Sutcliffe's lawyers said they were considering appealing to the Supreme Court.

They have produced doctors' reports indicating that Sutcliffe, who is morbidly obese, virtually blind and very frail, had experienced a dramatic improvement in his mental health and was not "uniquely dangerous".

But Lord Judge said that there is no suggestion that Sutcliffe was in any ordinary sense of the words "normal" or "average".

"The sheer abnormality of his actions themselves suggest some element of mental disorder," Lord Judge ruled.

"There is, however, no reason to conclude that the appellant's claim that he genuinely believed that he was acting under divine instruction to fulfil God's will carries any greater conviction now than it did when it was rejected by the jury," he added. (ANI)